The Order of Things

Museum ‘wet stores’ continue to be a source of inspiration for Neil Pardington in his latest show entitled The Order of Things at Jonathan Smart Gallery. The artist is no stranger to collections and collection areas, as those familiar with his exhibitions The Vault, 2007 http://jonathansmartgallery.com/content/view/74/38/ and The Wet Room, 2009 http://jonathansmartgallery.com/content/view/108/38/ well know. Now in the Auckland and Otago Museums, it is the confronting and 'terrible beauty' of individual specimens, crammed into glass jars of alcohol solution, which has caught his eye. Also striking to Pardington is the structure given by the glass jars, stacked and lined up row upon row in various shelving units, their placement designated by the Linnaean classification system of the collections. It is this taxonomy, this 'order of things' which is reflected by multiple grid-like photographs meticulously positioned by the artist upon the gallery walls.

The following paragraphs are lifted from essays by Ewen Macdonald and Elizabeth Rankin respectively – two of the five texts written for 'Neil Pardington The Order of Things', an elegant and beautiful digital publication edited by Elizabeth Rankin and available from Kriselle Baker at http://www.bakerdouglas.co.nz/

Below is an extract from The Real Unreal: Neil Pardington’s Double Exposure by Ewen McDonald:

“…This is where Pardington’s incorporation of the title The Order of Things is cleverly enigmatic: in referencing Michel Foucault’s seminal text with the same title, the artist acknowledges systems of ‘ordering’ as a means of comprehending the chaos that, ironically, photographic images have helped proliferate…

To summarise notes from his reading of Foucault, Pardington proposes that order is ‘a moment of expression’…’an enabling structure’…’a hidden network made manifest’. In opting to present his photographs as grids or sequences, and in series, the artist reveals a conundrum: a tabula in any form simultaneously groups and divides. And, while it is an attempt to classify and put things in order according to designated similarities and differences, there is no surety in the selective process. Pardington’s ‘order of things’ is his arrangement, his system. It is an approach that connects with his earlier photographic series that have equally explored and revealed the contents and contextual underpinnings of other institutions’ collections. While each series has replicated particular categorisations, the artist’s focus each time has been a rediscovery and re-imagining of the classifications we have come to take for granted. This is not so much an affirmation of ‘order’ in the world as it is an encounter with the power and transfixing processes of photographic exposure."

And from Elizabeth Rankin: Observing Order, Wakening Wonder: Neil Pardington’s The Order of Things:

“…the
intriguing way he set about recording the selected objects as
brilliantly vibrant images, poised in darkness, depended on his own
knowledge as a photographer. He positioned each specimen in turn inside a
900 x 900mm aluminium-framed cube, covered with fabric, with a
central-opening zip in the front panel to create a small aperture for
the lens of his camera…

The base and back of the box were covered
in light-absorbing black velvet, as was the small support for the jars,
which could be moved back and forward to position them to fill the
frame, whether they were the largest two-litre containers, 230mm high,
which housed the tuatara, or the smallest, such as the half-litre 105mm
one with the kiwi embryo. The dark fabric forms are virtually invisible
in the final photographs, so that the jars seem suspended mid-format.
Especially critical was the regulation of light, set to illuminate the
liquid and specimens inside the containers without the interference of
reflections on the glass, except for the brightness caught on the
shoulders of each jar – a complex scenario requiring multiple lighting
sources. Light from those positioned outside was diffused by the white
fabric sides and top of the cube, broken up with vertical strips of
black gaffer tape, and further reduced near the front with neutral
density gels. Within, frontal illumination came from a cross-polarized
LED light, while another with an orange filter, hidden behind the
support, created a warm luminosity to back-light the jars…”

All works are pigment inks on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta.The large individual prints are also available in 1000 x 666mm and 600 x 400mm sizes,priced at $5000 & $3000 respectively.Individual photographs from the grid works are also available in the sizes above.Prices include GST

Neil Pardington, with the assistance of Rob Hood, installing the first printof a grid of twelve, in the front gallery at 52 Buchan St. Sydenham.